. _ ' 'r r- _ w w f Wj Architectural Genius Give 'Em What They Satisfying Popular Tastes Hinders Ann Arbor B fly AL PHILLIPS Frank Lloyd Wright by JAN RAJIM R OVER 70 years Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings of all kinds as he believed they should be built, and for over 70 years Wright was a center of contro- versy. In 1887, when he began his de- signing work, contemporary build- ings were cluttered with "ginger- bread" decorations and houses were large boxes with smaller boxes set inside to serve as rooms. The young architect rebelled against the tradition-bound archi- tecture of the period and the re- turn to pseudo-classic styles which became the vogue after the World's Fair in 1893. Your figure Is your fortune...in FORTUNA. The marvel of "magic length" shirring and elasticized bengaline capitalize on every curve, 10-16 17.95 Wright conceived a new type of architecture, something which he1 called "organic," and defined it as one in which entity is the ideal, with the nature of the materials and the nature of the purpose coming clear and true to them- selves. It belongs to the site for which it was designed. A Wright house designed for the Arizona desert could never be transplanted to the shore of Lake Michigan, for the house in the desert belongs to the desert and becomes an integral part of its surroundings. THE WORD "nature" was used by Wright often in his expla- nations and descriptions of his architecture. As he told a group of University students here two years ago, "the only way to great architecture is through nature. I don't mean trees and animals and flowers-I mean the study of the way things are made by nature; the way you are made, and from the ground up.' An important part of Wright's architecture is the way in which he used materials. He believed that each material had a nature of its, own and that appropriate designs for one material would not be ap- propriate for another material. In addition to using materials in accordance with their nature, Wright believed that the various materials should look like what they really are. Thus wood panel- ing was stained, not painted, and cement blocks and concrete were Jan Rahm, a long-time ad.. mirer of Wright and his work, has read many books by and about him. colored a neutral, natural-looking buff or gray, not gaudy rainbow shades. Wallpaper was banished as something altogether unnatural. WRIGHT'S buildings have a great deal of ornamentation, with most of it within the frame- work of the buildings. For a building to be truly suc- cessful, Wright insisted that he be allowed to design the furnishings and to decide what paintings and other ornamental objects, should be used. The custom-designed fur- nishings thus help give unity to the structure. From the beginning. Wright cut out the excesses in a building. These include, basements, attics, cornices and interior walls which serve only to box in, a room. He cut off the gables and pillars of the Queen Anne houses being designed at the turn of the century and created the "prairie houses" with long, horizontal lines which hugged the ground, and made more livable by the fluid movement of space be- tween rooms no longer boxed in. WRIGHT was the first to use poured concrete in the mono- lithic Unity Temple in Chicago. He was also the first to use con- crete blocks with °a design worked into them. His Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was built with a non-rigid struc- ture which was capable of shifting with the movement of the earth. During the disasterous earthquake of 1923, the hotel was the only large structure which withstood the shock, proving that his un- orthodox ideas for the building were not just so much nonsense. The'design for the Imperial Ho- tel was not the only one which was attacked as being structurally unsound. Wright almost completed the work for a degree in civil en- gineering and he constantly exper- imented with new techniques.. When he designed the Johnson's Wax building using mushrooming tree -like supporting columns,. building authorities considered them unsafe. Wright proved their practicability by setting up one of the columns in a field and heap- ing sand on top of it with a steam shovel. Even he was surprised when 60 tons of pressure failed to crack the column. The building inspec- ANN ARBOR theatre as it now stands is exactly what the people want. Let us name the suitors. Number one: the Drama Season. Is placed in the number one spot because it is about to start again. What is Drama Season? With- out having read a charter, I would say from mere observation that it is five weeks of spring stock, di- rected, managed, designed, and acted by professional t h e a t r e people. Professional theatre people. This seems to upset some simple folk who say that the Drama Sea- son is nothing but a series of in- ane comedies and "popular" hits of no visible merit. The first thing wrong with this is that it is not true. Comedy, cer- tainly, and inane ones too. That is only one aspect of a pro- ject which endeavors to cater to The Drama Season, as it stands, .s a iuneiy aianced. p'uogram wicn amaZmngiy gooci taient. .! it were kinown Llow narct i is to line up .ceaniy good acors, even in Iairiy pig money tneatres, te respect, ior tne oo tnese people do wouia increase greaty. It is a processional season, and as sucn commerciai. 't'rue, a lemon appears every once in a while. The shows have a week to be designed, rehearsed, and a week of presen- tation. The law of averages says that you cannot luck out com- pletely on that schedule. But a clinker every once in a while is a very minor thing to the generally high level the Drama Season manages to achieve, PLAY PRODUCTION of the Uni- versity's Department of Speech is in the number two spot, mainly because it has just finished its season. Play production's aims are printed on the inside of every playbill. There you will find a paragraph - that says something about variety, all kinds of plays, and .so on. Whether or not these aims are followed is another mat- ter, but variety is the chief factor in a University playbill along with teaching students something about theatre on as many levels as is possible, which leads by indirec- tion to two major points. They are rather conservative over there, I've heard people say. Well, they're rather conservative because that's what people want. My first season here, the players put on "The Good Woman of Set- zuan" by Berthold Brecht, which is definitely an experimental play, and it drew fewer people than the student original which is tradi- tionally the season's lowest draw. I don't know if it was a good production even though I saw it, because I don't know that much about Brecht, but I doknow that the next summer we put on a pro- duction of "The Lady's Not For Burning" that was a reeker, and drew on it anyway, because the play was popular. This Wright-designed house is the home of Prof. William Palmer of the economics department. It is located on a hill in the south- east section of Ann Arbor and has the privacy from neighbors which Wright demanded of a site. The house is unique in that it does not have any right angles. The speech department's productions, which are generally good, must dray theatre-teaching purpose. Picture ,show a scene from "The Matchmaker" tors allowed the design to go through. This was not the case, however,; with the still unfinished Guggen- heim Museum in New York. The design for the circular structure with. a continuous spiraling ramp was slightly modified to conform with the city building codes. OBJECTORS to Wright's work have been legion, and their reasons for disapproval have been many and varied. Those in favor of conventional styles of architecture found "him impossible. Equally vociferous against him were modern archi- tects, who have worked with the "steel cage" idea and with abun- dant use of glass in almost every- thing. These architects have cri- ticized Wright for the exuberance of his ornamentation, while they have prefered to use stark, severe lines in their buildings. ONE OF THE most unusual com- plaints about a Wright design came from artists whose work will be exhibited in the new Guggen- heim Museum. They claimed that the sloping walls against which the pictures would be hung would not give the proper "rectilinear frame of reference." Wright scoffed at this idea and retorted that viewers in the Mu- New Reading for SPRING The Ugly American -Lederer & Burdick Unarmed in Paradise - -Ellen Marsh The Optimist - Herbert Gold Collision Course -Alvin Moscow The Status Seekers -Vance Packard The Affluent Society -John Galbraith Passionella and Other Stories - Jules Feiffer (author of Sick, Sick, Sick) SLATER'S Your College Bookstore seum would actually see the pic- tures as the artist do when they step back to look while still work- ing at their easels. But much of the criticism of Wright did not come simply as a result of his work. Wright was an individualist and a non-conformist in an era noted for its cooperative efforts in al- most all fields, including architec- ture. He did not believe in collec- tive work and he condemned competitions to be decided by a committee, because he felt the committee threw out the very best and the very worst designs and picked the mediocre. Many consider Wright the greatest modern architect. He did not have such a low opinion of himself. He felt that he had realized the goal he set for him- self early in his career: "Not only do I intend to be 'the greatest ar- chitect who has ever lived, but the greatest who will ever live." WRIGHT often claimed that he had brought the house down to fit the scale of a human being-- that is five feet, eight and one- half inches tall, which just hap- pened to be his own height. He frequently used low ceilings in' passageways so as to emphasize a high ceiling in a main room of a building. When a six foot four inch- tall man once exploded at this practice, asking why the halls were not in proportion so that he would not bump his head on the ceiling, Wright retorted by asking, "Have you ever stopped to think that you may be out of propor- tion?", 4 PROPONENTS of Wright claimed his haughty obstinance was necessary to fulfill his goal of bringing forth a new type, of ar- chitecture. That architecture has been deeply affected by Wright's work is something that cannot be denied. A partial list of his contribu- tions include the split-level living room, the corner picture window, radient floor heating and the car- port, which are common features of today's buildings, even in mass- built housing developments. Just how lasting. Wright's phi- losophy of architecture will be is something that only time can tell. It may be that his basic ideas of an organic architecture will live longer than his specific designs. "THE TINKER'S WEDDING" . Speech Department every taste, and sad or glad as it may seem, depending, the demand for comedies starring Don Ameche is as great, if not greater than the demand for the average drama. BUT LOOK at the record over the past few years: Fry, Miller, Shraw, McCullers, and this year, Beckett and Shakespeare. Hardly hollow dramatists, no matter the personal opinion. Al Phillips, a speech major at the University has appeared in Ann Arbor Civic Theatre. and department of speech pro- ductions. there is no audience to give its approval and to try things on? The audience in a situation always determines the type of plays that are given. And the Speech Depart- ment bills are good. The campus audience is not pri- marily an audience with a metro- politan background; therefore, the interest in classics is high, be- cause for many people the oppor- tunity to see classics simply isn't there. So an audience is created, and from a production standpoint, what can be learned from a classic show is invaluable. This year the bill ran from Wilder (and a fine show that was too) to Ben Jonson (for which I'll always be grateful) to Sophocles. The bill this summer looks gorgeous. The productions so far have been good and the summer shows are almost always good. A CIVIC THEATRE is a chance for a group of people with the same interests to get together and put on a show. Always the activities of the group are primary. The organiza- tion is carefully broken down into committees, and it is the job of these committees to come up with something pleasing to all the members of the organization. Thus the results of the organization are subservient to the organization it- self. This is true, whether the group under discussion is a garden club or a little theatre. It is this attitude that makes the productions of little theatres take on the air of charades. No civic theatre, not even the ones with magnificently specialized fa- cilities, such as Kalamazoo, can escape the feeling of performing for one's friends. N OW, the local Civil Theatre has in the last few years done some fine things. "Tea and Sym- pathy" and "Bus Stop" leap im- mediately to mind. The problems of the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre are more than usually difficult because of the competition of the University group, and until re- cently, from the Dramatic Arts Center. One thing I feel harms Civic IF A PLAY is popular, and that can be put in quotes or not, people will come no matter what the production. They simply were not interested in Brecht-which leads to another consideration. How can you learn theatre if Theat they The audier but 't throw I feel The this . group must tended times, ductic how i know. izatio lem o peopl experi rather Now loc. questi Arbor in the tal re sons Firs I i HAVE YOU VISI w . °. . ', c I. n't.cV- :_47s .} r S yY\ L :: } A ti4 5. . Mothers are entitled to the Nicest Gifts you can select. You will surely find beautiful things for her at our shop We can mail them for you. JOHN L EIDY ladies' casual wear and accessories 1212 SoUTH UNIVERSrY Campus Theatre Bldg. 1 ^rI. 11v :-V l HELP WANTED. We are in an unusual position. We have opened a very diversified store for you. Our stock consists of models, hardware supplies, new and used bikes, and various miscellaneous items. 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